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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616024">Warmth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/textbookchoices/pseuds/textbookchoices'>textbookchoices</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>His Dark Materials (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blizzards &amp; Snowstorms, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Teenage Fluff and Embarrassment</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:16:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,998</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/textbookchoices/pseuds/textbookchoices</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Come on, Will, we’re almost there,” she tries to say, but the words are lost to the wind. She’d used the alethiometer, earlier, to find out where they should go. <i>East, to a dry cave,</i> it had said. <i>East.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Black Is Beautiful 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Warmth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts">Val_Creative</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Completely TV-related, has nothing to do with the books.</p><p>I couldn't remember how old they're supposed to be by the end of the second season, but the actors look sixteen-ish so that's what I was imagining them as in my head while writing this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They end up in a world that’s been torn through by ice and snow.</p><p>Lyra half-tugs, half-carries Will across a never-ending snow-covered landscape. It’s dark and it’s cold, and what little light the moon and stars of this world is providing is blotted out by the thick, falling snow and the angry, biting wind that’s throwing it in their faces. Every step is a struggle, and Will can barely lift his legs, hardly awake and in more pain than Lyra cares to think about.</p><p>She thinks he’s bleeding.</p><p>It’s not as though she could check or do anything about it if he was.</p><p>“Come on, Will, we’re almost there,” she tries to say, but the words are lost to the wind. She’d used the alethiometer, earlier, to find out where they should go. <em>East, to a dry cave</em>, it had said. <em>East</em>.</p><p>She’d give anything to see Iorek Byrnison again now, to have him there in this desolate wasteland of cold and ice and snow. He’d keep her warm, but more than that, he’d be able to carry Will across this valley of snow easily. He’d be able to find the cave, and he’d be able to keep them safe and alive.</p><p>She doesn’t know how long it takes to find the cave. Too long, because in the end, Will hadn’t been able to walk at all of the last mile and a half.</p><p>Pan had had to help carry him.</p><p>Lyra can still feel it; the way Will seemed to be touching her all over despite the fact that he wasn’t. It was like he’d reached in, caressing something inside of her. Her breath had caught, and she’d sunk into the feeling of that warm embrace that wasn’t. It felt like the sun, somehow, like warmth cascading over her in contrast to the blistering snow.</p><p>It felt like he was sinking into her somehow, like a very nice dream that would leave her soft and happy and unwilling to wake up in the morning.</p><p>He’d been too out of it to notice, thankfully, and between the two of them, Pan and Lyra had managed to drag him into the cave when they finally, finally found it buried at the base of a jagged, tree-spotted mountain. The angle of the snowfall seemed to be keeping the deep inside mostly dry, and there must have been humans on this world after all because there was wood piled against the wall, and a pile of rough-spun blankets next to it.</p><p>Lyra and Pan let Will drop to the ground once they’re in far enough that there’s no more threat of the storm outside. He moans at the pain of the uneasy jostling, and doesn’t even notice the way Lyra’s entire body shivers when Pan, of all things, brushes against his chin with a cold, wet black nose.</p><p>“Pan, stop,” she says, voice shaking. “It’s not right.”</p><p>Pan looks at her, big fox eyes opened wide.</p><p>It <em>feels</em> right, not at all what everyone warned her about. Or maybe exactly what they warned her about. Pan knows it too. She thinks she can feel it, in the back of her mind, the way Pan is—</p><p>It’s not even that she believes in sin, exactly. Not the way the Magisterium talks about it anyway, not anymore. She knows there’s more to it, to sin and dust and the other worlds. To what it all means.</p><p>But she knows that what it feels like in her chest, that whether it’s good or bad or something else entirely, it’s what everyone always talked about. What they warned against.</p><p>It was too tempting. She’s scared of it, as much as she thinks she wants it. And Will isn’t even awake enough to understand what she’s already done; what she’s already allowed. It’s not right.</p><p>With stiff, frozen fingers, Lyra pulls Will’s worn jacket apart at the button loops. It’s soaked through anyway, from snow if not blood. His skin is cold, but feels blisteringly warm against her fingers. She wants to keep touching him, to keep looking at him—her fingers pale against his darker skin.</p><p>She forces herself to push his jacket off instead, and then cringes when her fingertips are smudged with blood. His stitches are leaking sluggishly where they’ve pulled apart. It isn’t bad—he won’t lose much or bleed out, not now, but he’s sweating and hurt. She drags her backpack over, using tape to re-bandage his wound even as he moans again.</p><p>It was, admittedly, her fault he was hurt at all.</p><p>She’s not good at keeping her mouth shut, and they’d been hurting that man—</p><p>She thinks Will would probably have jumped into the fight even if she hadn’t run straight into it, but she had, and Will had been struck with a half-broken bottle that ripped open the skin.</p><p>Will had had just enough strength to open a door after they’d hunkered down to stitch him up.</p><p>Pan stands next to her, worried, and asks, “He’ll be alright, Lyra, won’t he?”</p><p>“He’ll be fine,” Lyra says, stubbornly willing it to be true, and with a deep breath, pulls down his pants, leaving his underwear on. They’re still dry enough, and she’s not quite willing to strip him down entirely. She drags over two of the blankets from the pile there and wraps him in them, and then turns around and stubbornly takes off her jacket.</p><p>She drops her shirt next, shivering terribly from the cold, and then kicks her pants off to join the wet collection of her and Will’s wet clothes. She uses her arms to cover her chest even though Will’s eyes are closed and she couldn’t bring herself to take off the bra, wet as it is against her. He isn’t in any state to look at her, let alone care about what he sees, but her neck, ears and cheeks are red from the warmth of embarrassment anyway.</p><p>Lyra drags more of the blankets over, and then climbs under them with Will.</p><p>She bites her lip, then presses her body against his, back tense even as she curls next to him.</p><p>She feels Pan settle next to her, burying his nose against her back, and she lets out the breath she’d been holding.</p><p>It’ll be fine. It all will.</p><p>She wraps an arm around Will, feeling the heat of his body soak into hers where their skin touches. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to focus on Pan’s bulk against her back, and the heat of Will next to her, rather than the fact that they’re both nearly naked and touching like this.</p><p>If she was still at Jordan College, they’d be appalled. She’s not sure what they’d do to punish her, but it would be something terrible, she’s sure.</p><p>She wonders if the gypsies would understand.</p><p>Or the witches.</p><p>Or the people in Will’s world.</p><p>It doesn’t matter, she thinks, and shakes her head slightly, tucking her face in closer to Will’s until her cheek is pressed against his collarbone. It already feels warmer, being next to him like this.</p><p>She wishes he was awake to tell her what he thinks.</p><p>(She’s glad he isn’t.)</p><p>(She wishes he was.)</p><p>(She’s—confused.)</p><p>When Will wakes up again, when he has enough energy, he’ll use the knife and open a door to a new world, somewhere they won’t be in danger of freezing to death. In the meantime, Lyra will keep them both safe. She has to.</p><p>She presses in closer still, squeezing her eyes shut even tighter as Pan presses closer to her in turn, snuggling in. She breathes, slow and careful, against Will’s neck where she’s tucked her face so close, and for the first time in a long while, she thinks, <em>Please.</em></p><p>
  <em>Please.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I need him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please.</em>
</p><p>She needs him now, for more than just the knife, or simple companionship.</p><p>He’s her—friend.</p><p>He’s more than a friend though, really. He’s something more than that. Something warm, and deep, and safe that she can cling to. She hasn’t had that, in so long.</p><p>His fingers twitch against her waist, and he clutches her back, weak but real. He’s not awake yet, just responding to their closeness, to the warmth between them now.</p><p>They’ll survive this.</p><p>They’re good at surviving.</p><p>And maybe, somehow, at the end of all of it, they can stay together, her and Pan and Will.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Will wakes up, a weird sensation of cold at his back and soft warmth all along his front. He moves to adjust, to drag the blanket further around him, but then stops with a pained groan.</p><p>Right, stitches in his abdomen because Lyra got into a bar fight.</p><p>He has no idea how she manages to drag him into these sorts of things.</p><p>He opens his eyes, and looks around.</p><p>They’re in a cave, dark but dry despite the wind raging outside of it that he can hear roaring past without even looking. They’re both huddled together under an apparent stack of old blankets—threadbare, dry, scratchy, and looking rather like they’ve been through hell.</p><p>Pan is at Lyra’s back, a soft-looking white fox with a black nose and black eyes.</p><p>His head is tilted up, and looking straight at Will, like he’d woken up when Will did and started paying attention.</p><p>“How long have we been here?” Will asks, careful to keep his voice down. Lyra is still sleeping, curled in next to him, her arm wrapped around his chest and her fingers pressing against his spine. He can even feel her legs against his, and he’s grateful for the heat she’s putting off all along him. This cave is freezing.</p><p>Pan says, “The whole night.”</p><p>Will lays his head back down, unsurprised by the answer.</p><p>“When she wakes up, I’ll try and cut open a door.” He’s not entirely sure he has the energy to focus on it, but he’s unlikely to get all that much better in a cave like this, and with a storm like that outside—well.</p><p>“Alright,” Pan nods, and then keeps staring at him.</p><p>Will blinks. “What?”</p><p>“You won’t tell anyone, will you? She only did it to keep you safe.”</p><p>Because that wasn’t a concerning statement at all.</p><p>“Did what?”</p><p>Pan nods at him. Well, at him and Lyra where they’re snugly curled up together beneath the blankets. Will stares at him, nonplussed for a moment, before it finally occurs to him that—he can feel Lyra’s fingers against his back. His bare back, skin-to-skin, and—and not just on his back.</p><p>And not just her fingers.</p><p>Heat flushes over him as he realizes that—that Lyra must have undressed him and herself before getting under the blankets with him. The flush of heat in his neck and cheeks somehow feels to get worse when he intentionally moves his hand—just an inch—and feels, well.</p><p>Soft, thin strings on Lyra’s back.</p><p>He snatches his hand back as if he’d been burned.</p><p>“Oh,” he says, voice choked off. “Right.”</p><p>Well.</p><p>“That’s—textbook for how to keep warm in a situation like this. They teach it in school. I’m not going to say anything. Or do anything!”</p><p>He must be too loud, because Lyra, still pressed against him, starts to shift and mumble as she wakes, and Will jerks backward, heedless of the spike of pain in his abdomen from the sudden movement.</p><p>“Morning!” he says, and then wants to hit himself in the face.</p><p>She frowns, her whole face scrunched up, before she says, “Good morning?” with a questioning lilt at the end, and Will closes his eyes and presses his face against the cold, dirt-covered ground of the cave.</p><p>Pan suddenly climbs over Lyra’s hip, hopping between them, and says, “How about that door then?”</p><p>He glances at Lyra. There’s a pink-red flush on her cheeks, her pale skin unable to hide it the way his darker skin manages to.</p><p>Right, yes, door.</p><p>And <em>clothes</em>.</p>
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